South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is the "last hope" for Africa's most advanced economy, but his government must turn incentive policies into laws to secure more Chinese investment, a senior Chinese diplomat told Reuters, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. China is South Africa's largest trading partner and has pledged more investment than any other country since Ramaphosa embarked on a drive last year to attract $100 billion of new investment to lift the economy out of a slump.

When a lender suffers from a run on deposits or a funding crisis, one solution is a central-bank takeover. The People’s Bank of China, however, is finding that option has shut, a Bloomberg View reported. Two months after the PBOC seized Baoshang Bank Co., China’s first such move in two decades, regulators have another troubled situation on their hands. On Sunday, Bank of Jinzhou Co., a small regional lender in the rust belt province of Liaoning, got a partial bailout from three state-owned asset managers.

China’s Bank of Jinzhou, which suspended trading in its shares earlier this year and saw its auditor quit, said on Thursday that it is in talks with multiple parties for possible strategic investment, and that it is operating normally, Reuters reported. The statement on the bank’s website triggered fresh jitters about the health of smaller banks in China’s northeast, after regulators took over Inner Mongolia-based Baoshang Bank on May 24, rattling China’s interbank markets and sending some firms’ borrowing costs spiking.

China’s bond market has been eerily quiet lately. Over the past year, investors in China’s U.S. dollar bonds had gotten used to the idea of defaults, a Bloomberg View reported. As early as 2015, the government started allowing some state-owned enterprises to renege on their commitments, a painful but welcome step that helps differentiate healthy firms and troubled ones. But there hadn’t been a single case since China Minsheng Investment Group Corp. triggered a cross-default in April.

A Chinese company has pulled out of the running to buy British Steel, dealing a blow to efforts to rescue the stricken manufacturer and safeguard thousands of jobs, the Financial Times reported. Jingye Group had submitted an offer for the whole of the UK’s second-largest steelmaker, which collapsed into insolvency two months ago after its request for a £30m state bailout was rejected, according to two people briefed on the matter. Based in China’s industrial heartland of Hebei province, Jingye also owns hotels and a medicines business alongside its main steelmaking operations.

Two months after China shocked investors with the first government seizure of a bank in two decades, market confidence in the nation’s smaller lenders has yet to fully recover, Bloomberg News reported. That may be just what the country needs. When it took control of Baoshang Bank Co. on May 24 and imposed losses on some creditors, China’s government upended the long-held assumption that it would always provide banks with a 100% backstop.

A cash crunch at one of China’s best known conglomerates is getting worse as the company said it will not be able to pay its upcoming dollar notes, Bloomberg News reported. China Minsheng Investment Group Corp.’s offshore unit said in a filing that it won’t be able to repay the principal, as well as the interest on the 3.8% $500 million bond due August, after considering its liquidity and performance. On Thursday, the property-to-financial conglomerate announced it only managed to repay part of the principal on a 6.5% 1.46 billion yuan note.

Loans to Venezuela from President Nicolas Maduro’s allies Russia and China would be renegotiated though the Paris Club if Maduro leaves power, an advisor to the opposition said on Wednesday, responding to concerns about favourable treatment for the two countries, Reuters reported. Ricardo Hausmann, who represents opposition leader Juan Guaido at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), said Guaido’s team has not determined how loans might be restructured under its governance because bilateral debt talks typically take place under the auspices of the Paris Club creditor group.

The wild ride in an Indonesia textile maker’s dollar bonds is putting a spotlight on the risks that Asia junk bond buyers are taking, Bloomberg News reported. Four months after a subsidiary of Indonesia’s Duniatex Group sold a $300 million bond, attracting over $1 billion of orders, that bond has plummeted, losing nearly 70 cents on the dollar this week. The stunning fall, prompted by a missed loan payment by another group subsidiary, has shocked bond investors.

Conditions in China’s credit market are helping to stoke startling growth in the nation’s pile of asset-backed securities, according to a top underwriter. Almost all types of bonds have been affected by the fallout from a surprise government takeover of a troubled lender in May, Bloomberg News reported. But banks are the main holders of China’s ABS and have better access to funding, largely preventing a sell-off in the sector, said Zuo Fei, general manager of the innovation financing department from China Merchants Securities Co.